On Catholic hospitals

msmihai

msmihai

Total Posts: 1

Joined 05-04-2012

Newbie

Total Posts: 1

Joined 05-04-2012

Posted: 05 April 2012 07:00

I’ve just had a conversation with a very devout Catholic who was extolling the virtues of the Church’s hospitals and care for the sick. So I posed to her the simple question: isn’t the existence of Catholic hospitals proof in itself that prayer does not work? why can’t we simply pray away the pain and spare ourselves billions of dollars each year spent on treatment, meds, doctors, research, insurance, etc etc.?

Her reply amounted to this:
1) God is all good, but he is not responsible for sickness and pain
2) God is omnipotent, but because he is not responsible for illness, he cannot cure it
3) Prayer is powerful, but sometimes god, for Reasons Known Only Unto Himself, answers them indirectly, for example, by endowing certain humans with talent as surgeons.

When asked why—if god answer the prayers of the sick and dying only indirectly—did he have to wait until the 19th/20th century to introduce modern medicine, her head pretty much exploded.

The Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years. Seriously, is this the best they can do in terms of theological argument?

I’ve just had a conversation with a very devout Catholic who was extolling the virtues of the Church’s hospitals and care for the sick. So I posed to her the simple question: isn’t the existence of Catholic hospitals proof in itself that prayer does not work? why can’t we simply pray away the pain and spare ourselves billions of dollars each year spent on treatment, meds, doctors, research, insurance, etc etc.?

Her reply amounted to this:
1) God is all good, but he is not responsible for sickness and pain
2) God is omnipotent, but because he is not responsible for illness, he cannot cure it
3) Prayer is powerful, but sometimes god, for Reasons Known Only Unto Himself, answers them indirectly, for example, by endowing certain humans with talent as surgeons.

When asked why—if god answer the prayers of the sick and dying only indirectly—did he have to wait until the 19th/20th century to introduce modern medicine, her head pretty much exploded.

The Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years. Seriously, is this the best they can do in terms of theological argument?

There appears to be a blind spot in theological thinking.
Religion has a self protective mechanism that somehow circumvents any logical argument that contradicts its assumptions.
It’s almost like the religious mind is sleep-walking.
Most of those who buy into the dogma of religion have had an experience where the brain is flooded with feel-good chemicals and they never seem to recover.
It’s like the brain has become rewired.
They will almost always defend their delusional beliefs to the end of their life.
Waco….........Jonestown….......Heaven’s Gate…......and on and on….......
Amazing.

I’ve just had a conversation with a very devout Catholic who was extolling the virtues of the Church’s hospitals and care for the sick. So I posed to her the simple question: isn’t the existence of Catholic hospitals proof in itself that prayer does not work? why can’t we simply pray away the pain and spare ourselves billions of dollars each year spent on treatment, meds, doctors, research, insurance, etc etc.?

Her reply amounted to this:
1) God is all good, but he is not responsible for sickness and pain
2) God is omnipotent, but because he is not responsible for illness, he cannot cure it
3) Prayer is powerful, but sometimes god, for Reasons Known Only Unto Himself, answers them indirectly, for example, by endowing certain humans with talent as surgeons.

When asked why—if god answer the prayers of the sick and dying only indirectly—did he have to wait until the 19th/20th century to introduce modern medicine, her head pretty much exploded.

The Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years. Seriously, is this the best they can do in terms of theological argument?

There appears to be a blind spot in theological thinking.
Religion has a self protective mechanism that somehow circumvents any logical argument that contradicts its assumptions.
It’s almost like the religious mind is sleep-walking.
Most of those who buy into the dogma of religion have had an experience where the brain is flooded with feel-good chemicals and they never seem to recover.
It’s like the brain has become rewired.
They will almost always defend their delusional beliefs to the end of their life.
Waco….........Jonestown….......Heaven’s Gate…......and on and on….......
Amazing.

Something else has to be going on here.
Perhaps those who are inclined to live in delusion are more willing to die for a cause or to defend their tribe.
Perhaps religion has a positive effect on the gene-pool in which it emerges.
There has to be a reason why something so illogical is so prevalent in the human species.

. Seriously, is this the best they can do in terms of theological argument?

Yes.

Also. If they’re so certain that evolution is a fiction, then I propose they be cut off from the fruits of evolution. That pretty much includes, among a lot of other things, germ theory and progress in antibiotics.

It’s not fair that their lives are sustained by the fruit of scientific progress and the hard work of people who make that progress and their lives are saved daily by that progress yet they spend their lives trying to undermine and stop society from passing down the knowledge needed to continue that progress.

Evangelicals and Catholic fundamentalists live a fundamentally parasitic lifestyle on society.

I grew up in a devout Catholic household. I realized this prayer contradiction at around the age of 10. I was always told to pray not for my will, but God’s. Okay, so I have to pray to God so he does his own will? If I don’t pray, he’s going to do my will? Or, you can pray, but sometimes the answer is no, because it his his will, not yours that is done. I don’t need to point out the contradictions in this logic, as I said I came to the conclusion when I was 10 and my parents had no answer other than what I just stated. It took me awhile to shake myself of the psychological conditioning that kept its grip on me making me thing I was destined to spend forever in a lake of fire though.

On the evolution issue, I just made a post on this the other day. The Church’s position is that the science is valid, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t extreme conservatives in the church who still refuse to believe it.